(a) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to horse shoes, and in particular to methods of and apparatus for attaching horse shoes to horses' hooves.
(b) Description of the Prior Art
For several hundreds of years farriers have practised the skill of shoeing horses with no substantial changes in the techniques employed. The usual procedure of shoeing the horse is to trim the keratinous portion of the hoof to the required length, and then an iron shoe is forged to match the trimmed hoof. Once cool, the shoe is attached to the trimmed hoof by means of nails hammered through holes in the shoe into the hoof so that the nails project through the hoof wall part way from the bottom thereof. The projecting nails are then cut off and cleated over as necessary.
The process described above is obviously in general most satisfactory, for it has been practised for a very long time. It does however have disadvantages which can lead to lameness in a horse. For example, if when shoeing a nail penetrates the sensitive part of a foot or if a horse casts off a shoe, leaving some nails projecting from the bottom of the hoof and on which the horse subsequently steps, acute problems can be caused. Furthermore, a horse with brittle horn material sometimes cannot be shod because the nails would split the material, and similarly a horse with slow-growing horn material can also be difficult to shoe because the old nail-holes lead to splits. A further disadvantage is that the process described is a skilled art which cannot properly be practised by those not previously trained as farriers.